The IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel

If you have one thing in your life that you can look back on and be proud of forever, well, then you are a lucky person indeed.

I was fortunate enough to spend ten years doing something that was thrilling, exhausting, joyful, and fulfilling; and something that I am hugely proud of to this day.

The IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel was a podcast that featured the very best of the spoken word community, delivered three times every week, directly to podcast listeners around the world. Each podcast featured a single performance of a poem by the artist or ensemble, followed by commentary, or an interview, or some other additional content that would help the audience truly appreciate the work they were hearing. It was the diversity of the poetry, and the diversity of the commentary, that made IndieFeed such a special show.

The channel had thousands of subscribers, and by the time we finally closed up shop in early 2016, we had released 1,614 shows, featuring a total of 632 different poets. As of today, the downloads are continuing, and we’re now at close to 10 million shows distributed.

Performing at the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Showcase and Party, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City, 2009

Producing the podcast was a huge undertaking, and I couldn’t have done it alone. Although most of the shows were produced and hosted by me, especially in the early years, by the time we closed our doors we had some amazing guest hosts and returning hosts from around the world, sending in content from as far away as Africa, Australia, and the U.K. Ad the poets themselves were my greatest joy, selflessly contributing their work and sharing their wisdom and talent year after year.

But as with all good things, IndieFeed had to come to an end. I finally decided that if I was going to give my own writing the attention it needed, as well as put more energy into The Performance Poetry Preservation Project, then I needed to not only bring IndieFeed to a close, but quit my 35 year career in Records and Information Management as well. Both of those things finally wrapped up in 2016. It was a difficult, but necessary decision.

But the poetry lives on! Luckily, all the content of IndieFeed is still available! The website for the show is still available, and all 1,614 shows are carefully indexed by poet. Check out the show archive at http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com. Find your favorites, listen to their words, and share those links widely. And we have also transferred the complete archives of the podcast to P4, so it will be preserved in a digital repository for future generations.

Thanks again to everyone for all the support over the years, and as I used to say on the show, “Until next time this is Mongo, reminding you to keep listening, keep reading, keep writing, and keep performing! For IndieFeed, and for today, I’m signing off..”

Wess Mongo Jolley

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Featured Poem:

Rosemary for Remembrance

wild rosemary memories
of the gardens of northern california
the sprig she cut for each of us
after the handfasting
is on my altar still
a decade and a half later
she was roomy and luxuriant
and he was mushroom puck
heavy earth mother bosom and
randy roving pan
an archetypal pair
but in our hearts we celebrants knew
their future would not be kind
rosemary for remembrance she said
handing me the cut and fragrant twig
her eyes wet with newfound love
as she hugged me to her thick breast
tears in a lace handkerchief
and fingers sweet with spring herb
a year later
her pan found me in a beltane bower
and tossed the condoms aside